Something To Fill The Void
by HedwigBlack
Summary: Romilda knows how silence can be deafening, how words she once thought meaningless aren't really meaningless at all.


_This is for Amber's "Collect Them All" Challenge on HPFC. Prompts were Romilda Vane and "Those you've pained may carry that still with them, all the same they whisper all forgiven." -Spring Awakening, 'Those You've Known'_

_Typed this on mobile so apologies for any formatting or weird spelling errors I might have missed. Mobile ffn is evil. _

_*brief mentions of sexual abuse and torture_

* * *

Romilda sees the girl with the radish earrings standing not twenty feet away. She's dressed in dark blue, but there are still flashes of color here and there. She is surrounded by friends and fellow mourners. They are all paying respects to a young boy killed in battle and here Romilda is, not even listening. All she sees is the blonde hair and the bottle caps peeking out from beneath her collar. All she sees is the one opportunity, so close and yet so far, but she knows that this might be her only chance. And it probably won't make a difference and it won't help her sleep better tonight, but it's a start. It's important.

Because she sees this girl she once tried to tear down with her words. She sees her with head held high, a few tears in her eyes but even so, she is confident and brilliant and well loved. And Romilda is the opposite of all that. You see, she never realized how far her voice carries. Never thought she had anything to say worth listening to. All she wanted was to fill the silence.

All she wanted was something to fill the void.

Because she knows how silence deafens, how it is filled with words that go unspoken, imagined conversations and sort of but not really apologies, clumsy dialogue that trips over the edge of the rug before trailing off, leaving the dust behind to be swept underneath it. To her, it is the sound of knowing that in the next room her mother is crying herself to sleep, face hidden in the pillows so that her children don't hear her. It is the sound of her father's absence.

And later, she discovered the silence in the darkest dungeon, a classroom long in disuse. She found it in the boy's forceful hands, in the ever-shrinking space between his body and hers. He told her it was important to be quiet, that pain is beauty and good girls keep their mouths closed unless, of course, they were commanded to _open_ _wide, princess_. She bore her silence with bruised wrists, and shaky smiles.

She bore her silence by overcompensating. She threw her words around so carelessly, spreading gossip, dropping names, making the words seem so meaningless, tricking herself into believing that it wouldn't have mattered if she'd said them when she had the chance.

So instead of _no_ she said things like _whore_, projecting her hate onto the red-headed Gryffindor beauty out of jealousy. Instead of _no_ she said things like _stupid_, pulling the younger boy down that ugly spiral with her. Instead of _no_ she said _Crucio_ because she was told to and Romilda just does what she's told. She didn't want to. She never wanted to. Those first years had to believe that. Those first years whose screams still fill the silence when she lies awake at night in between a mantra of all those words she used to spit so thoughtlessly.

_Whore, ugly, stupid, freak._

Freak.

That's what she'd said.

She sees the girl begin to move away, her one chance slipping through her fingers. She almost chokes but she manages to get out a weak, "Stop."

The girl doesn't hear.

"Stop!" Louder now. "Luna!"

The girl turns, a thoughtful expression on her face. She remembers your name.

"Hello, Romilda."

Romilda inhales deeply, trying to dislodge the lump in her throat. She wonders why this is so difficult. She stutters. "I...I...I know I was never very kind to you."

Luna cocks her head, a slight frown playing around her mouth. "No, I suppose you weren't. But you weren't the only one."

"I know, but still. It was...wrong. And I don't think you're a freak. You know..." Romilda breaks eye contact, unable to keep the tears from welling up. "...for the record. I think you're quite nice, actually."

"That's very kind, Romilda," Luna says dreamily. "Thank you."

She then begins to move as if to turn away, her fingers twirling in her hair but Romilda speaks up just once more. Just once more.

"That is to say, I'm sorry. I'm terribly sorry."

Luna smiles. "All's forgiven. It always was."

And Romilda watches the girl with the radish earrings walk away, taking a great invisible weight with her. She wonders why it is that it's so difficult to fill the void with something meaningful instead of letting the silence rise up and overwhelm her. She wonders why of all the words she could say, sorry is the one she needs to hear even if it's from her own lips.

All she knows is that in this moment she is forgiven. And that's enough. It's enough.


End file.
